


Enough

by Piscaria



Category: Mercy Thompson Series - Patricia Briggs
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 12:08:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8890222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Piscaria/pseuds/Piscaria
Summary: Leah knew what she was getting into.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stygiansulfur (icefalcon)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/icefalcon/gifts).



> Happy Holidays, stygiansulfur!

A pocket of turbulence rocked the helicopter, and Leah couldn’t entirely suppress a grunt of pain as her broken arm in its sling collided hard with the metal wall of the crew cabin. In her lap, Bran growled, low and ferocious. The sound sent a chill down Leah’s spine, and she forgot her own injuries. She glanced up from Bran’s pale and sweating face to see Anna staring at them in horror from the facing seat.

“What’s happening?” Charles demanded from the cockpit, his voice clipped with worry. 

“What do you think?” Leah snapped back. “If we keep bouncing around like this, he’s going to wake up!”

Bran shifted at the sound of her voice, another growl rumbling through his chest. 

“It’s not Charles’s fault,” Anna said. The words were chiding, but her tone was gentle, almost insufferably soothing. “And you’re not helping. He feels your emotions through the mate bond.”

“Don’t school me about mate bonds,” Leah hissed, though she tried to keep her voice quiet. “I’ve been mated longer than you’ve been alive! And if Charles had agreed to let somebody else fly, he could be back here to help us with him. What are we supposed to do if he wakes up?” If Bran woke injured and afraid, his wolf out of control, Charles couldn’t come to their aid without crashing the helicopter. 

“If he wakes up, it will take a lot more than me to help us,” Charles said darkly. 

Sadly, Leah suspected he was right. Charles and Leah were the two strongest fighters in the Aspen Creek Pack, save for Bran himself, of course. But if the Marrock lost control of his wolf, even both of them together would be no match for him. A dark part of Leah wondered if might be better to crash, rather than risk unleashing Bran’s wolf on the human world, if that happened. She wasn’t entirely sure a helicopter crash _could_ kill the Marrock, but it certainly stood a better chance than the three of them could manage. 

_We are_ not _killing our mate,_ Leah’s wolf told her coldly.

“We all need to calm down,” Anna said. Unbuckling her seat belt, she crossed the narrow space of the crew cabin to kneel in front of the bench seat where Bran lay with his head cushioned in Leah’s lap, his body still shaking from the effects of the fey drug. “Easy now,” Anna murmured, taking Bran’s pale, trembling hand in hers.

Leah’s fingers tightened possessively in Bran’s hair, even as she clamped down her control over the wolf who wanted to rip the other woman to pieces for daring to touch _her_ mate. Her dirty look was lost on Anna, who’d bent her head over Bran’s pale body. 

Drawing in a deep breath, Anna sang, “’Tis a gift to be simple, ’tis a gift to be free.” Her rich voice carried even over the roar of the helicopter blade. Leah recognized the tune as one of Bran’s favorites. From the cockpit, Charles’s voice joined in harmony. Leah was no singer, but she hummed along, doing her best to project peace and safety through her mating bond. 

As they reached the end of the song and started over again, Bran sighed, rubbing his cheek against Leah's thigh. His breathing deepened as he drifted back into sleep. Through the mate bond, Leah felt Bran’s wolf settling. 

Relieved, she glanced up to meet Anna’s gaze.

With dried blood darkening her whiskey-colored hair and her wolf’s pale eyes glowing from her exhausted face, Anna looked nothing like the terrified, half-broken creature Charles had rescued from Chicago. In the years since their first meeting, Leah’s hatred for Anna had only intensified. It felt strange looking at her with relief instead of resentment. 

Anna’s lips quirked in a wry smile that said she clearly felt the same. Then, deliberately, she dropped her gaze. As an Omega, Anna didn’t fall into the pack hierarchy. She could meet Leah’s gaze without flinching — Bran’s too, for that matter. Leah pressed her lips together, unsure whether to interpret Anna’s gesture as courtesy or subtle mockery. 

But as Anna began another song, this one wholly unfamiliar, Leah decided she didn’t care. Pack politics were far from her mind. She rested her cheek against the helicopter window, letting her fingers move soothingly through Bran’s sandy hair. 

She would never let Anna or Charles know it, but Leah blamed herself for his injury. 

After the public attack on that bridge in the Tri-Cities, Bran had suspected it would only be a matter of time before one faction of fey or another decided to test the Marrock’s strength in his own territory. When Bran’s voice in her head interrupted Leah’s book club meeting this morning to announce a fey attack on the Post Office, it had almost been a relief. She hated waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

The Abominable Snowman (Leah couldn’t think of a better way to describe it), looked like it had been carved from the Cabinets themselves, a towering frame of granite muscle beneath snow-covered white fur, with diamond-sharp claws that sparked in the winter sun. Leah and Charles had led the attack against it, with support from all of the Aspen Creek wolves who could be counted on not to lose control and pose an additional threat to the town’s human population. 

Bran, of course, had not participated in the battle. While less public than the one in the Tri-Cities, this attack had clearly been a test of the Marrock’s strength. For Bran to deal with it himself would be all but admitting that he saw the fey as a threat. As it was, sending both Charles and Leah after the beast showed how frazzled he was. It had also proved to be his undoing. 

Even as the Abominable tossed her hard against the brick wall of the post office, Leah had felt the sting through the mate bond. She’d crumpled to the sidewalk, less conscious of the broken leg and bruises than the echoed throb of pain in her hip. Through the mate bond, she'd caught a disorienting glimpse of a red-haired man with too long fingers and an extra set of joints in his elbow before Bran shut her out.

 _Focus on your own battle._

With the clarity of hindsight, Leah knew now that she should have ignored him, should have left the Abominable to the rest of the pack and gone to her mate’s aid. 

Instead, she’d leapt back into the fray, confident that Bran could handle himself. Only when the Abominable Snowman lay dead in the Post Office parking lot did Leah tickle the still-closed mate bond. Bran shut her out more often than she’d like, but sometimes he relented when she pressed. It didn’t necessarily mean anything that he kept her out now. But Leah’s stomach knotted when she remembered that red-hot sting. She knew that only Bran’s surprise had kept him from shielding her from it. 

Of the wolves who’d fought in the battle, only Charles had shifted back to human, thanks to his beautiful, saintly mother, damn her to hell. Injured, it would take Leah at least 15 minutes to complete her own transformation, maybe longer, since she didn’t dare draw upon Bran’s strength. 

Resigning herself to playing Lassie, Leah limped up to Charles and nudged his denim-clad leg with her nose. Fortunately, werewolves were better at reading lupine body language than humans on TV. A few minutes later, they were racing back to Leah and Bran’s house. They found the dead fey first, crumpled with a broken neck in the doorway to Bran’s study. Inside, Bran had curled into a fetal position beside the fireplace, trembling with the effort of holding back the wolf. Blood stained the leg of his jeans. A barbed dart lay on the floor a few feet away, reeking of silver and magic.

The helicopter touched down in a grassy field between a sprawling adobe house and an incongruous single-wide trailer. Fortunately, Samuel was already waiting for them. 

Unfortunately, so was Mercy. Too late, Leah remembered that Bran had sent Adam Hauptman, the Alpha of the Columbia Basin Pack, to a meeting in D.C. Mercy had been sitting cross-legged on the hood of VW so broken-down and ugly that Leah was shocked Adam allowed it. As the helicopter door opened, Mercy hopped down.

Meeting Leah’s gaze squarely, she said, “The Columbia Basin Pack welcomes the Marrock and his pack into our territory. We offer you refuge and healing. So long as you are here, you may share in our hunts.” 

The words were oddly formal, at odds with Mercy’s stained jeans and too-large Hauptman Security tee-shirt, knotted at the back. Too late, Leah remembered that Bran had formally cut ties with the Columbia Basin pack. She, like Charles, had been too focused on getting Bran to Samuel. Their own pack had a doctor, of course, but no one who could handle fey poison. 

It had been a long time since she’d needed to enter another wolf’s territory. As Marrock, Bran’s territory encompassed all of North America. It felt strange to say the ritual words now, stranger still to say them to Mercy. But the sooner the formalities were dealt with, the sooner Samuel could look at Bran. He’d already darted into the helicopter, clearly unconcerned with the necessary formalities.

Swallowing her pride, Leah said, “As the Marrock’s mate, I thank you for your hospitality. We will share in your hunts and fight by your side, so long as we are in your territory.”

Mercy’s eyes widened. Whatever she’d been expecting from Leah, it clearly hadn’t been politeness. Turning from her surprised expression, Leah hurried back to Bran. Charles and Samuel were carefully unloading him from the helicopter. To Leah’s surprise, they didn’t take him to Hauptman’s house, but instead towards the trailer.

“Ariana’s in there,” Samuel explained, reading Leah’s confusion from her face. “She’ll know more about fey poisons than I will.”

“Why can’t she come to the house?” Leah asked. “Hauptman has a medical and observation room, doesn’t he?” She’d never been to Hauptman’s house before, but all Alphas had a place to treat injured wolves.

“We do,” Mercy broke in. “But Ariana doesn’t do well around werewolves. It was hard enough getting her to agree to the trailer.”

As she spoke, the trailer door opened. A tanned woman with golden hair shot a nervous glance at the group of them before stepping aside to let Samuel carry Bran inside. Even from this distance, Leah could smell the fear rolling off her. 

Leah started to follow Samuel inside, but a moment later, he re-appeared in the doorway, blocking her path. 

“I’m sorry,” he said. “But I can’t let you inside. With Da in this state, Ariana’s already on edge. There’s no way we can have another werewolf in such a small space with her.”

“You should bring Anna,” Charles said. “She’s good at calming people down.”

Samuel shot Anna an appraising look, and then nodded. “That might actually work,” he said. “I’m not sure Ariana has ever been around an Omega. Anna might not frighten her the way a dominant wolf would. But no one else. That includes you, Charles.”

“I’m not leaving him!” Leah snapped.

Samuel opened his mouth to answer, but Mercy cut in first. “Look, you don’t have a choice! If Ariana has a panic attack, we’re all dead.”

“And that’s assuming Da doesn’t wake up and go on a rampage,” Charles added.

Samuel nodded. “Between the two of them, they could take out the whole city.”

Leah wanted to argue, or maybe hit somebody. But Anna caught her good hand, squeezing it tight. 

“I promise, I’ll take care of him for you,” Anna said. Her eyes were lowered, her head tilted back slightly to bare her throat. 

Leah blinked down at their joined hands, surprised to see that her own fingers had curled around Anna’s without her realizing it. Peace flowed into her through the Omega’s touch. Despite herself, Leah felt her anger dying.

“You promise?” she asked. To her embarrassment, her voice broke a little on the word. 

Anna nodded fervently, squeezing Leah’s hand tighter. “Believe me. I know how much he means to you.” 

“We’ll do everything we can for him,” Samuel added. He was telling the truth. Leah knew that without even using her werewolf senses. Whatever else you could say about the Marrock’s sons (and Leah could say quite a lot), they did love their father as much as he loved them. 

Leah let out a shuddering breath and released Anna’s hand. “Fine.”

* * *

Fortunately, Hauptman’s house had a guest bathroom with dual shower heads and lots of hot water. Now that she wasn’t focused on Bran, Leah was entirely too aware of the layers of dirt and blood streaking her skin from the battle. It never seemed entirely fair to her that the filth in her wolf’s fur remained on her skin after the change. Of course, the world wasn’t fair. Leah knew that better than anyone.

She lingered in the shower longer than necessary. The hot water stung some of the still-healing cuts, but the heat against her sore muscles was entirely worth it. Gingerly, she tested the arm that had broken in the battle, relieved to see that it was healing straight. This day had been bad enough without Samuel needing to re-break it for her.

Finally, she turned off the shower, drying off with one of the big, fluffy towels helpfully stored on the nearby rack. Mercy had found some clothes for her: leggings and a soft, flannel shirt. Beneath the fabric softener, they still smelled faintly of coyote, but at least they fit. Still gathering her hair into a loose braid, Leah emerged from the bathroom, compelled by the scent of meat.

In the kitchen, she found Charles sitting at the counter, his attention entirely focused on the rare steak in front of him. Mercy stood at the stove, in the process of transferring a freshly-seared steak to another plate. A stack of raw steaks sat waiting beside her.

Leah’s mouth watered, and she climbed onto the barstool beside Charles, gratefully accepting the plate Mercy slid in front of her. For the next half hour, nobody spoke. Mercy kept them supplied with fresh steaks, as Leah and Charles ate ravenously, needing the protein to help them heal after the battle. When Leah finally pushed back her plate and wiped her mouth, she felt almost human again. 

The door opened, and a teenage girl burst in, waving a cell phone. “Hey, Mercy, there’s a group of werewolves battling a monster on YouTube!”

“Already?” Charles groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “Do you have a computer I can use?” he asked Mercy. “I didn’t have time to pack my laptop.”

“This way,” Mercy said, leading him out of the kitchen. 

Leah stood as well, smiling at the teenage girl who was staring after them, nonplussed. “You must be Jesse.” 

Jesse blinked. “Do I know you?” 

“We met once,” Leah said. “When you were about this tall.” She held her hand down by her knee to demonstrate. “Of course, your hair was blonde then.” 

Jesse grinned, twirling a lock of peacock-colored hair around her finger. “It might be again someday. Probably not just blonde, though. Maybe blonde with some apricot ombre.” 

“And to think that when I was your age, girls who wanted to rebel just went to college.”

“Did you?” Mercy asked, stepping back into the kitchen.

“I was one of the original New Women,” Leah said. “That’s how I ended up in the Marrock’s pack. I refused to yield to male wolves who were less dominant than me. My last Alpha finally threw his hands up and sent me to Bran.”

“Good for you,” Jesse said. 

Mercy was staring at her with an odd expression. It took Leah a moment to realize it was respect.

“How did you rebel, Mercy?” Jesse asked.

“She stole cars,” Leah said dryly. She couldn’t entirely keep the bitterness out of her voice when she added, “Also shoes.”

“Hey, the car wasn’t my fault!” Mercy protested. “And Charles said I had nothing to do with the shoes.”

Leah noted that she’d been careful not to say that she _hadn’t_ stolen them. Mercy had always been good at lying without lying.

Hurriedly, Mercy changed the subject. “Can you hook that thing up to the TV?” she asked Jesse, nodding towards the phone. “I want to see the battle before Charles erases all trace of it.”

“I already downloaded it,” Jesse assured her, leading the way into a media room full of leather furniture and dominated by a massive TV. A few moments later, they were watching as Leah, in wolf form, launched herself at the Abominable, neatly evading the diamond claws to score a savage bite.

Mercy whistled under her breath. “I have to hand it to you,” she said to Leah. “You are one hell of a fighter.”

“That was you?” Jesse asked, eyes widening.

“That was me,” Leah agreed, examining her chipped nails. She wondered if Jesse had some polish she could borrow.

“Awesome!” Jesse said, only to hiss in sympathy as wolf-Leah went flying into the post office wall. Even on the phone recording, the crack of bone was audible.

“That must have really hurt,” Mercy commented. Onscreen, Leah was still crumpled on the sidewalk, as Charles and Sage kept the Abominable’s attention away from her.

“No,” Leah said, “that’s when Bran . . .” She swallowed, falling silent before her voice could betray her again. The mate bond was still closed to her. She looked up to find Mercy looking at her strangely. 

“You really do love him, don’t you?” Mercy asked. “I always thought you were just in it for the power.” Then her eyes widened, as if she’d only just realized what she’d said. Mercy’s mouth had always gotten her into trouble.

Leah clenched her hands into fists. Mercy was an Alpha’s mate now, she reminded herself. Leah couldn’t attack her in her own territory, not without causing too many problems for Bran. 

“I’m sorry,” Mercy was backtracking. “I didn’t mean —”

“Leah knew exactly what she was getting into when she became my mate,” a soft tenor said from behind them. “I’m only grateful that she agreed to it anyway.” 

They turned to see Bran leaning in the doorway, pale and unsteady, but clearly in control, if he’d managed to keep them from catching his scent. Forgetting about Mercy, Leah hurried to his side. He held her close for a second, kissing her forehead. 

“Thank you,” he told her. “Samuel said if he’d gotten to me any later, it would have been too late.” For a moment, Leah caught a glimpse of affection in his eyes. Then Bran’s face went shuttered, and she pulled away, straightening up. 

_I can never love you,_ he reminded her, his voice a smooth caress inside her head. _But I do care. You should know that by now._

Leah did know that. Someday, it might even be enough.

The End


End file.
